in forward motion
by porcelaindakota
Summary: The reasons why are a long time coming. John, Post-Reichenbach.


Ella has a small repertoire of action verbs, probably the standard set learned by all therapists, all of which are used to describe the act of verbally communicating one's emotions to a demanding listener.

"Tell me more." "Describe what you're feeling to me." "Explain what you're going through." Or the best, fucking absolute best: "The things you wanted to say… say them now."

She trots them out every session like clockwork, and every session, John's answer is the same. _No. No. No. I can't._

Finally, the indomitable Ella blinks.

"I think," she says, her voice level and professional all the while, "that we need to try a different arrangement."

* * *

><p>The emails will not stop coming. It is closing in on five in the morning, John has not slept all night, and he's received just over two dozen messages since he deleted all the others just before dinner.<p>

He glances at their senders. He is not surprised by any of them—a few former clients offering condolences, Jacob Sowersby and Mike. He even sees one from Sarah. He doesn't understand why they bother. They all think Sherlock was a fake, and they are equally misguided if they believe John has anything to say to them.

Lestrade and Donovan have sent a few messages of their own. They are not there to scream at or hit, so instead John slams the laptop down with an incensed force that, when he opens it again later that night, he realizes has broken the screen.

* * *

><p>John's in a small basement clinic that is mercifully on the far side of London, one of about a dozen in a small circle. They all wear variations of the same face, misery etched into every line, heavy burdens weighing every expression.<p>

They are cold and silent. They are _stone. _John is a live wire; he wishes he could place himself in the unfeeling rut they all inhabit. John has only two settings. He can only alternate wildly between the gutting, all-consuming wildfire of his rage, and a deep cavernous melancholy that swallows him down and closes dark over his head.

The dark-haired woman seated across from him interrupts this mute, impotent wish. "So why are _you _here?" she asks. She is leaning forward in her uncomfortable plastic fold-out chair, her body shifting and her startlingly grey eyes focusing on him. John meets her gaze and recognizes there something kindred, deep-seated and familiar. The woman's face lasers in on John's, sharp and bright.

John knows instantly that she is like him. Neither can bow their heads and accept their blows, like the others in this room.

"My doctor," John replies, squaring his shoulders, "has decided that group therapy might be best for me."

The woman alone is animated; she snorts, raising a thin eyebrow. She is so thin John fancies he can see every bone in her face.

(_Cheekbones. _Dammit. It's in every little thing.)

"Doctors," she replies, "Mine's the ultimate condescending arse. I'm here because I had what the authorities termed 'a violent outburst' in his office." John must look interested—but he's not really aware of his facial expression changing, so maybe this emaciated woman just wants to talk—because she continues. "I threatened to replace his genitals with his stethoscope, or something similar. He was an idiot. The doctors are all idiots."

Maybe it's because the epithet is too familiar, maybe it's because John's just sick of the world handing him shit and being assailed at a _therapy session _is just too much, but he clears his throat and sits up in the grandest display of will he's evidenced since he visited Sherlock's grave: "_I'm _a doctor, actually."

The woman doesn't flush or apologize. She scoots forward just a little more, and she smiles, unafraid of John's directionless ire. "Then I guess you're an idiot, too." It's not mean, the way she says it, just like she's stating the obvious.

She peers at him, like she's studying his reaction.

John's heart bursts and breaks as the old fault line reopens. It is such a simple thing to miss, being called stupid.

He holds out his hand. "John, John Watson."

She is surprised but takes it. "Mary Morstan."

* * *

><p>Three days after Sherlock is buried, a long black car, windows tinted so as to be impenetrable, pulls up alongside John on the sidewalk.<p>

The window rolls down, and the face of Mycroft Holmes, the almighty himself, emerges.

"John," the face says. "I was hoping to speak with you privately."

John keeps walking, eyes fixed straight ahead. Shoulders back, jaw square, the perfect sharpened soldier.

"John." The voice that comes from Mycroft's car becomes more pointed, but it still cannot compare to John's razor edges. "John, we have to talk."

In Afghanistan, crowds would line the roads when the convoys passed through, some friendly, children begging for candy and cigarettes, and some not—screaming curses, throwing rocks at the armored vehicles. The instructions were always the same: keep going straight ahead. Move forward and do not engage.

John feels the desert's heat on his back as Mycroft says, "John, let me look after you. It's what Sherlock would want."

The only time you reacted to the Afghans was when they became the enemy, when an IED was planted under your Humvee, when you started taking fire. John feels the scar, remembers the bullet, burning a hole in his left shoulder, just north of his heart.

"Go to hell," John says. He does not look at Mycroft. He turns sharp and disappears into the hotel he has been staying in since the night Sherlock jumped.

Peace is in the upper drawer, the cold shaft of his gun.

* * *

><p>He and Mary go out for pints after their group sessions end, in some little run-down pub far enough from Baker Street that angular, curly-haired profiles and artfully-twirled trench coats do not haunt him from every booth.<p>

"Grief counseling," Mary says. "What utter shite." There is an anger in her voice that John translates into energy.

After a few drinks, Mary manages to nudge him into describing Sherlock. He starts at the very beginning—Afghanistan, the phone, the pink suitcase. He describes the first meeting with Moriarty, the swimming pool and the bomb, dances over Irene Adler and Baskerville.

He stops abruptly before that day at Bart's. If he tells the story, he will be there again, he _knows, _and there is only so much alcohol can protect him against. But he breaks off there, and Mary is kind enough not to comment on his tale's sudden end.

Mary listens all the while, and her eyes lose some of their grey sharpness. John experiences an old feeling from the army, of being in the presence of a fellow soldier. It is painful but companionable, sharing a pint with someone who is an almost-stranger but knows the same battlegrounds.

When he asks her reasons for grief counseling, she smiles bitterly and her lips lose any color. She gives him only two words in response: "CNS lymphoma."

John-the-doctor nods. Not a good diagnosis. More than a bit not good. "Who?"

Mary spears him with a look. "Me."

John belatedly takes stock. She is underweight, alarmingly so. The dark ridges on her fingernails, the weakness when she tries to rise from a chair: chemotherapy, radiation, most likely extensive. Most likely failed. This woman is past treatment and waiting to die.

His mouth is bitter. Sherlock would've gotten it all.

"People your age don't normally—"

"No, they don't, normally."

(It's like Sherlock's sitting on the next stool over, shaking his head. _You see but you don't observe. Obvious._)

* * *

><p>The man's hands are shaking. John feels the tremors beneath his fingers as he takes his pulse. (It's fast, thready).<p>

John picks up his patient's medical records, studies his lab results. Poor liver function—he doesn't need to read on to the next page to know it's cirrhosis. An alcoholic with years of addiction and self-destruction under his belt. This man will die early and painfully, and John just can't find it in himself to give a damn.

One life is not equal to another. Sherlock Holmes is dead, but this man and thousands like him keep on living, unaware of their own lowness, and the world is worse off for it.

_Stop that, _John tells himself. _Stop it now. _

He cancels dinner with Harry that night. He's afraid of what he might say. He's already afraid of what he's thinking.

* * *

><p>"This is the most time I've spent with a bloke who's not getting pumped full of drugs next to me." Mary's already gesturing to the barkeep for the next round.<p>

"Most I've spent with anyone who isn't Sherlock or a criminal mastermind," John replies into his empty shot glass. A question wriggles its way past the haze of his brain to his lips. "Why haven't I heard you mention any family?"

"Because I've none." A wave of something flashes across Mary's face, her mouth arcing down into a determined line. The part of John that made him ask, in the back of his alcohol-thickened brain (the part that sounds like Sherlock) says _observe and remember. _

Instead, he replies "Oh."

Mary purses her lips, a warning shot. "Why haven't I heard you mention any of yours and Sherlock's friends? At least in the present tense. You still seeing them?"

"No."

"_Oh."_ Her voice is thick with whiskey and sarcasm.

"Sod off, Mary."

* * *

><p>Once John is officially moved out, Mrs. Hudson starts calling every Sunday. He answers the first time.<p>

"I've donated most of Sherlock's things," she tells him. "Took them to the school after all. Everything else is boxed up now." She stops there, a pregnant pause.

"Right," John finally says. The line is heavy and dead between them.

"Oh sweetheart," Mrs. Hudson finally says, "I miss him too, the poor thing. And I miss you. I've lost both my boys." She cries. She cries and cries and _cries. _John takes it, sits on the other end and waits for her to stop. Each sob hits him like a blunt punch. He wants off the phone. He doesn't want to have to hear this anymore. He shuts his eyes and breathes deep and tries to picture the Afghan desert.

* * *

><p>One of the boxes of Sherlock's things, the items deemed ineligible for donation to the school, is delivered to John's barren new flat. Mrs. Hudson keeps on calling, every Sunday afternoon.<p>

John watches the phone as it rings, glares at the intrusion. When the ringer finally falls silent, John snatches up the phone, pounds out a furious text message. In forty minutes' time, he is sliding onto the stool next to Mary.

One day he comes home and Mycroft is at his miniscule kitchen table, the box of Sherlock's belongings sitting opened before him. The skull is out on the counter.

Mycroft turns as John comes in. "Ah, John."

"What are you doing in my flat?" John stops on the threshold. "What are you doing with those things?"

"I apologize for the invasion of your privacy. Once I realized what they were, I simply couldn't help myself." Mycroft turns from the box. He still has his umbrella. It fills John with an impossible, directionless fury, just to see it there in his kitchen, next to Sherlock's things.

"People are worried about you, John." Mycroft rests the umbrella across his knees. "Let me help you work through this."

John clenches his fists and swallows before he answers. "I've had just about enough of your help, thanks."

Mycroft's eyes darken as they search John's face. "John," he says more slowly, more softly, "I know you may blame me for what happened to Sherlock. But he was my brother, John. We can mourn him together."

"Well, that's a load off my shoulders. You got your brother killed, I couldn't stop him from jumping off a building, but it's all going to be all right now."

Mycroft makes a sort of jerking motion but stays silent. "I told you before but I'll say it again now," John says. "The only way you can help me, Mycroft Holmes, is by getting out of my kitchen and going to hell. If you think I'll help you… assuage your guilt, so you can go back to your club and tell yourself none of it was your fault, then you're dead wrong. Dead wrong," John repeats, and he realizes his hand is shaking worse than even before he met Sherlock.

Mycroft, _damn him, _sees it too. But it convinces him to leave.

* * *

><p>The call comes in just after he's brought up a takeaway from the Indian place round the corner. In less than two minutes, he's in a cab, his curry forgotten on the counter.<p>

Mary looks very small and skeletal in the hospital bed. Her eyes are bright and glassy when John comes into the room, but they are unfocused, roving across the ceiling to rest somewhere in the vicinity of the IV in her arm.

John's footfall sounds heavy on the tile. "Is someone there?" Mary asks, and for the first time in their acquaintance her voice is quiet and tenuous. Fear has replaced her outrage and her strength.

"It's John," he replies. He has always had a good bedside manner, and it serves him now. His voice is calm. This happens everyday. Calamity strikes constant.

"Seizures and loss of vision." Mary's voice sounds clogged. "They're both… both symptoms," she adds, as if she must explain.

"I'm so sorry." And in a small blessing, he actually is.

"Don't be sorry for me." She says it so fiercely. John can feel her anger, the power that first drew them together, roar back. He both admires and pities her for it, that she has a strength that overwhelms her disintegrating body.

She blinks at nothing. "Why are you here?"

"The hospital called me."

"No, why are you wasting your time with me?" The white hospital linens bunch in her clenched fists. "Bloody _hell, _don't you have anything _better_ to do?"

For a moment, John's mind is blank. "I… I was under the impression we were friends." (_I don't have friends. I've just got one.) _And. That you needed someone, at this point in—"

"Shut. Up. This isn't normal. You hardly know me, and I hardly know you, but now you spend all your time getting piss drunk with the terminal cancer patient."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware my company was so offensive."

"Don't think I can't see right through you, John Watson." She turns in the direction he's sitting, but looks about three feet to his left. "This is just another way for you to lie down and drown in your emotional _shit _and never move on."

Everything in John freezes. He speaks but is stone: "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means." The anger is back in her voice, but it is bile, not strength. It does not animate—it drains her. "Sherlock is _dead_. Accept that and define yourself outside it. It's pathetic, the way you refuse to do anything but sit around and be angry and depressed. _Sherlock _would think you're _pathetic._"

"Because you're the model of healthy emotion, hm? I should be taking lessons from _you? _Mary the madwoman?"

And _that _seems to do it. Mary attempts to throw herself in John's direction. She's too weak, though, and instead ends up half on her right side, one arm off the narrow bed. John pushes back in his chair, stumbles up and away from her.

"_I don't get to move on from this,_" she hisses. She is crying. "I can't ever move past this. Sherlock doesn't get to, either. You do. Don't you _dare _fuck that up."

"I can't believe this," John sputters. When he slams the door, Mary is still there, stuck half on her side, crying silent and furious. He doesn't know which of them is more _pathetic. _

* * *

><p>It's probably only because he's so pissed and Mary and now bereft a drinking partner that John finally responds to one of Greg's invitations. Lestrade emails John, all of two lines: <em>Haven't seen you around. Dunkler's, 2300?<em>

_Yes, _is all John writes in return.

He strides stiffly into the pub at 2307 hours. Greg is in a corner booth, facing the door, and John silently joins him. His back is to the door, and his hand flinches reflexively for his gun.

Greg's face has more lines to it, John notices. More wrinkles, from a forehead more often creased in worry, new brackets around his mouth from more frequent grimaces.

The DI seems to be giving John a similar once-over. "How have you been, then?" and the _since Sherlock splattered his brains on the concrete _goes unsaid but loudly implied.

"Oh, you know." Greg nods but clearly, in fact, does _not _know. "And you?"

"On suspension, for the time being." Greg taps his fingers on the table in some sort of nervous, nonsense rhythm, and John wants to scream at him, _stop that. _

Something must tell on his face. Greg leans in. "John, have you been talking to anyone?"

John barks a short, violent laugh. "I've a friend dying of cancer I get drunk with a few times a week."

"But not your therapist? Or your sister?"

John shakes his head. "I'd go to them if I wanted to make everything worse. Come on, now, let's get some drinks."

"_No. John." _Greg wraps his fingers around John's wrist, physically wrests his attention from the bar. "Look. I know I can't possibly understand what you're going through right now. But just know that I'm—we're _all_—here for you right now. Maybe you don't want to talk, that's fine, that's your decision. But you need to know your friends are here for you."

John gapes at him; after a moment, Lestrade unwinds his grip and retracts his hand. "I want to help," he adds, looking down at the table. "If you want to talk about Sherlock, I can do that. If you just want to get piss drunk, I can do that, too. Tell me. Tell me how I can help, John."

John pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Do you think it's… do you think I should talk about Sherlock?" John honestly doesn't know.

Lestrade exhales heavily. "I don't think it will hurt as much as you think."

* * *

><p>So John finds himself back in Mary's room the next night with just less than forty-five minutes before visiting hours are up, still unsure if he should have come.<p>

"Mary?" he calls as he knocks on her open door. "Mary, it's John."

She doesn't react. She is a tiny twig woman disappearing in hospital linen, a bundle of bones. Death hangs in the very air, and for a second John wants to run the other way, burst out into the streets where there was noise and dirt and he wasn't watching a second friend leave.

"Mary," he says louder, stronger. She stirs, just a little bit.

"Sorry I can't offer you a cuppa," Mary murmurs. John sits next to her bed and places his palm to her forehead. Her skin is almost translucent. The dark hair against the pale white is almost too reminiscent of Sherlock on the sidewalk; John shuts his eyes and reminds himself that here there will at least be no blood.

"I owe you an apology," John says squarely. "And… um." A deep breath, then two. "I want to tell you about… about right before Sherlock died."

"All right," she says again, in the voice that isn't really her voice anymore. Her eyes don't open. "I'm listening," she murmurs. She knows what a precious gift this is, the value of what John is offering.

"He was standing on the rooftop of St. Bart's Hospital and he called me. As a… to say goodbye. I was on the street and looking straight at him." John can hear the thickness in his voice, and he stares down, anywhere but at Mary. Mary's gaze is constant on him, he can feel it, but he can't look up. "He lied to me. He told me he was a fraud. He wouldn't let me go to him. _Keep your eyes fixed on me_, he said. And… and then he jumped. I saw him fall. And I couldn't—" He swallows. "I couldn't. Help him. Or understand."

Silence lays between them, as corporeal as if it had pulled up a stool. John's focus moves to his left hand.

"He loved you very much," Mary finally says.

John lifts his eyes and sees that hers have opened, pale grey with sickness burned into the irises. He doesn't understand the expression on her face; her eyes have gone wide and her colorless lips move wordlessly. She looks like she's been physically struck. John regains his foothold in the present while Mary has gone somewhere only she can see.

John finally clears his throat, wills himself to stop picturing Sherlock when they'd rolled him over on the sidewalk. The memories push their way into every little thing. "He didn't even trust me enough to tell me the truth, the bastard."

Mary shuts her eyes, her face collapsing in on itself. "He loved you very much," she repeats.

And then: "John?"

"Yes, Mary?"

She coughs past the phlegm and obstruction in her throat. "I'm going to…" She makes a sound like a whimper. "I'm going to be going on. To bigger and better things, soon."

John breathes deep, steadies himself. "I'll be here, right up until the end."

Mary gives what may have been a nod, her eyes blindly gazing into the ceiling. "I'll give Sherlock your love," she whispers.

She shuts her eyes and is quiet.

* * *

><p>A man calls early the morning after Mary dies, rousing John from a restless half-sleep just before dawn.<p>

"Hello? Is this John Watson?" the man asks. His voice trembles, a prelude to disaster. John feels a hard sickly pit form in his stomach.

"Yes," he says blearily. "And who is this?"

The man takes a deep ragged breath. "My name's Richard Morstan, I'm Mary's brother. The hospital told me I should get in touch with you, I'm… I'm sorry for the hour."

In the foggy morning recesses of John's uncaffeinated brain, something heavy and jagged falls into place. "Your… sister?"

"They said you could tell me what happened, how she was."

"She'd been sick a long time." What does this man want from him?

John knows and wishes he didn't.

"That's just the thing. I… I never knew. I'm working abroad right now, I haven't been around. Mary told me—she told me the radiation had worked... and I just received a call this morning, saying she'd… she'd…"

As the other end dissolves into sobs, John, rather than Mary, pictures Sherlock. Sherlock, letting John go, letting John call him horrible, untrue things. Sherlock, standing on the roof, declaring himself a fraud, lying and then _flying. _It is a knife to his gut.

_I understand. Oh God. Why didn't you tell me? _

Mary's betrayal, in the end, is the key to Sherlock's.

* * *

><p>"So I think I get it," John says.<p>

Ella looks surprised. He is speaking, unprompted by any of her extensive verbal tools. "Get what?" It's even more surprising than his reappearance in her office.

"Why I was so angry. I was… so upset that he'd lied to me. I thought he hadn't trusted me with the truth, that I had been… some sort of failure, to him."

"John—"

"No, let me go on." He is talking now, for once, and he doesn't want her interruptions about how he needed to accept that Sherlock had been a fraud or her platitudes that it hadn't been his fault. He knows which of these is true and which isn't.

"Sherlock lied, but… not about what everyone thinks he lied about. Not what the papers say. But he lied to me when he died." John shuts his eyes and hears Sherlock's voice again. _Please, will you do this thing for me? _Sherlock's hand, reaching for him and grasping only air.

"He thought he was keeping me safe. I don't know how or why, but he." John swallows. "He got it in his head that he had to protect me."

Sherlock—and John knows this now, knows it somewhere deep down and untouchable, the very bedrock of his being—told his last lies _for _John. He kept John away when he knew Moriarty would come for him, and bid him believe the newspapers' venom to spare John from… from what? Moriarty? The press? John may never be able to explain Sherlock's exact reasons, but he knows now where they came from.

* * *

><p>"You look better, dear." Mrs. Hudson pours John a cuppa. Steam swirls up, bringing with it the scent of a fresh brew. John picks up the small china cup. "So much better."<p>

He gives her a smile. It's not entirely genuine, still fault lines at the edges, but it's an improvement. Small steps. "I feel much better, Mrs. Hudson. I suppose I just… needed some time."

"Oh, John, of course. I'm just delighted to have my dear Doctor Watson back." Mrs. Hudson smiles, radiating all the simple gladness and affection that John's own mother never did offer him.

_Sherlock loved you, too, _John thinks. It isn't a happy thought—not yet, at least—but it's something soft and safe, a warm core that shields him against the darkest of his thoughts.

There's just one more piece to put back into place. Mycroft, unflappable as always, doesn't deign to look surprised as John walks into the Diogenes Club.

"This is what we found from CCTV footage around St. Bartholomew's Hospital," Mycroft says, pulling out a manila folder and a grainy security-camera photograph from within. A tall, lean man, walking with a dark suitcase. The bottom falls out of John's stomach; he is a soldier, he knows what kind of case that is.

Mycroft passes John another slip of paper. _Sebastian Moran, _it reads. The man from the video's picture comes under, along with a record of a long career as a military sniper, and a list of suspected kills afterwards.

"Last known to be working with Jim Moriarty," Mycroft rumbles. His voice is almost gentle. "He was, as far as we can tell, set up the day Sherlock died to have a clear shot of the approach to the hospital. I'm sure you can guess what choice Sherlock was given."

_Friends protect you. _Sherlock had been listening after all.

John rises steadily, the ancient leather chair gusting noisily beneath him. "Thank you very much, Mycroft," he says. He is sad, so sad, but also calm. "Maybe we could meet for tea sometime soon."

"I would like that," Mycroft agrees, and John leaves.

* * *

><p>Sherlock's grave is well-groomed, no doubt his brother's doing. John squats and sets his small bunch of flowers at the base of his headstone. He pauses to trace the gold letters of Sherlock's name.<p>

"I always was a step behind you," he murmurs. "You utter berk. I miss you so much." He coughs and straightens up, blinks away the sudden hotness behind his eyes. "Its, I'm, uh. I'm getting better. I think I've stopped being so angry. I know I didn't let you down now."

John scrubs his hands over his face. "Just know, Sherlock, just _know, _that I know why you did it now, and… and I would have done the same for you. I understand, and… thank you, for caring that much about me and for doing that for me."

His voice chokes off. John doesn't know if he'll ever be able to convey this torrent of emotions, the gratitude, the irreparable _loss, _the hope that he's walking in the right direction now.

(He can't know then, but Sherlock is going to give him a second chance to work on it.)


End file.
